A Tale of Two Cities

Before leaving for Colorado, I met with a couple friends for one last San Francisco brunch. We laughed over the semester, each story with an undertone of thankfulness that we had changed and for the better. One of my friends chuckled and said to me that I was going to see Denver with all new eyes. This, he’d find not the least bit surprising to know, has proved truer than I anticipated.

Reentering Denver I treated it as I had San Francisco. I crept around corners, charged into stores, shook the city like a child would shake his toy box. It seems I have a restlessness and eagerness instilled in me, together like a time bomb ticking down to when I will have my next adventure. My friend and I wove in and out of the Christmas lights of 16^th Street Mall. Denver’s beauty is nothing if not classy, and it touches the heart in a different way. It’s polite, always asks permission, but serenades one with its own tune.

 We found an ice skating rink nestled by the Clock tower. The sweet, charming appearance of the rink quickly became a series of dives to the rim as children literally raged a war in the middle. Someone at some point in time had the idea of giving children barricade-like structures to learn how to skate with. I have never seen children more empowered. They threw their barricades at each other. They purposefully charged in large groups, attacks and counter attacks that almost took me down as the first of the casualties.

Afterwards, still in search of a destination, we stumbled upon the Union Station turned into a hotel, illuminated with a Christmas shine. Its presence triggered a San Franciscan empowerment, an elation that comes with each step. The sense that one is so close to a story, in such a special place, that no step can be in the wrong direction. We walked inside. We watched a Christmas party send laughter out into the cold night. We feasted on the feel of the air. We stepped into an elevator, stirring an excitement now so familiar and so essential to my life.

Overlooking Union Square in San Francisco there’s a hotel with a glass elevator. For years it’s been closed to tourists, and for months my friends and I dreamed of sneaking in, rising above the glimmer of lights and rhythm of passerby. Finally, the night before I left, we were successful. We stepped in with a big group of guests, side glanced each other, and tried not to burst out laughing. The city expanded underneath us like a pop up book. Sure enough, we needed a room key to bring the elevator back to the 1^st floor. We were stuck. Oh, but what a beautiful place to be stuck. 

The feeling is not in the jolt of the elevator. The joy is not even in the physical beauty of the view. The elation is in the action, in the smile as long as the skyline, the eyes as bright as any skyscraper. A city, whether it be San Francisco or Denver, is a dare to be all that one can be. It is a challenge to find happiness in each step, in any direction. The key is to fling oneself into a city with the carelessness and spirit of a child, even without a barricade. If one ends up pinned under a pile of children on an ice skating rink, or closed in an elevator, so be it. Happiness is never stuck for long.